Always again
by ibuzoo
Summary: This time, we're completely strangers tho we're not, young in age, but old souls. This time, you found me. [Reincarnation AU]


**0**

**o.**

This is a story in the first person.

I was born.

I was made.

It's really simple, isn't it?

**i.**

I have known you for nearly two millennia.

To most people it sounds like forever, to me and you, it has been a split second.

**ii.**

It takes me a while to understand that thousands of years of existence is hardly enough time to get to know you. Both of us have died countless times, the cold hand of death helping us to understand who we are, who we always have been.

Altair and Malik.

_(again)_

**iii.**

Sometimes it takes my mind a while to understand what we have, a beautiful opportunity, a chance to chase ourselves trough life and death and time.

It's a gift.

_(it's a curse, nevertheless)_

**iv.**

One of the most important questions you will ask me later will be, "Since when?"

It's not that I won't have an answer, I have a few, but all of them will be insufficient and only partly true.

After all, "Since when" has never been the question.

* * *

**1**

**o.**

It starts in Masyaf.

Not for us. Our story started almost a thousand years before, you were a prophet, i was your sinner, cursed for loving no one but myself, desiring what could never be mine. I wanted to have it all but thirty pieces of silver and the boon and bane of an endless life was all i had left.

It took me thousand years and so many lives to finally find you again. I didn't realise it at first, rivalry and envy always on our sides, pesky travellers along our ways, we were brothers after all not by blood but by sword and creed.

The day your arm was the cost of my vanity changed it all.

It starts in Masyaf, because that's were we met again.

**i.**

I was here before. I have done this before.

I remember dying.

I'm not dead.

_(not yet, not anymore)_

I don't understand.

I don't know why.

_(later, much later, i'll look back and realise i should have started running while i had a chance)_

**ii.**

The moment my eyes meet yours for the first time after all this years, it feels as if I've seen you before.

_(another life, another time, another story)_

I would never say these things out loud, there are too many words on the tip of my tongue, too much, not nearly enough. I can feel it, your eyes on me more often than i want and you know, you knew.

_(you always knew)_

It's a mixture of amusement and hope that I'll don't fail you this time, hope that I won't blow it up again and you're judging me with your eyes, with your glance, there's disappointment in them when you realise, far too late, that I already lost my senses.

_(thinking back I realise that you've known our parts all along)_

**iii.**

I murder my father and the golden sphere ensnares me with a lullaby, a song of times long forgotten. It's powerful and I lose myself in visions and memories that aren't my own. The real world seems so bright and dim, it's sharper and blurrier around the edges, the apple's world too whimsical, far less consistent with all the different people and futures who come and go.

After I use it everything seems slow for me, creeping away with a progress I'm yearning for. We lie in bed together, tangled limps, your head in the crook of my neck and you're humming a lullaby on your own, your words a whisper, a chant that keeps me here with you. When my hands touch the apple again there's something in your eyes that reflects brightly and dies within seconds.

The despair that you can't change the end of this story burns deep inside of you.

**iv.**

When I finally recognise you, it's far too late.

Your head rests in my hands, your blood spills over my fingers, your skin cold and rigid. Your eyes are dead, no judging, no scrutinising any longer. The anger i feel flaring up in me is the empty echo of failing you again.

**v.**

I've been here.

I learned my lesson.

**vi.**

Sometimes one life just isn't enough.

* * *

**2**

**o.**

Life is persistent, never stops for thought or reason.

Death has a tight schedule which cannot be bent.

**i.**

I wake in Italy, 1454, the golden year of artists and Renaissance surrounding the streets of the Peninsula. I never wanted to leave Arabian, but decades had made the region seem smaller and claustrophobic, and my disposition couldn't take the heat of the sun, not after Masyaf, so it seemed that Europe was the only place I could go.

**ii.**

There are lives when we die and love and fuck someone else, or aren't born in the same place, and somehow despite all odds we still manage to find each other.

But if I am honest, finding each other is never the hard part, but what comes after. Not just the right place at the right time - but the right circumstance.

**iii.**

I hear of a man fighting in the name of our brothers, of our creed, they call him the red death, the eagle of florence and I have a strange feeling of deja-vu, a pull in the direction, the tingling sensation on my skin when i first enter the city.

But it's not you who my eyes, my expectations disappointed to the bone, a brat, still in his teens, still wet behind his ears, thirsty for revenge and the blood of the people who killed his family. His eyes burn with the fiery italian sun but there's nothing I can do to help him, nothing I can do to change his way.

I barely watch when he ruins everything our creed stands for.

**iv**.

It doesn't take me long to find you.

**v.**

You're a Medici, this time, the younger brother of Lorenzo Il Magnifico, get involved in tavern fights while your mind is still as sharp as always but you take a step back, let your brother take the praise but the folk, oh the folk loves you. You're there hero, their samaritan but they don't see those old phantom pains reflecting in your eyes, don't feel the deadly peril that surrounds you like a golden halo.

We both know, how this will ends.

If you'd ask, I'd follow you in an instant. But you never do, never speak of it. You just look with disappointment when I gather my supplies, the remainder of my belongings, reminder of the night, and leave.

**vi.**

You call out only once.

It's easy to ignore.

_(easier than to admit the wave of nausea and the twist of my stomach, clearly the italian sun and yeah, let's go with that, because the alternative is just fucking annoying)_

**vii.**

You only live for another three days.

It's raining when you get killed in front of The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore.

I do nothing to stop it.

I merely watch.

I merely weep.

**viii.**

Somehow this time wasn't enough either.

_(I supposed out of all the times I have lost you, Italy was the easiest, for i have hardly known you before you was taken away)_

* * *

**3**

**o.**

This time, we're completely strangers tho we're not, young in age, but old souls.

This time, you found me.

**i.**

There's a gun at the base of my neck, adrenaline pounding through my system, a disorienting mess of fear and exhilaration on my brain, a bang, warm splatters across my nape but no pain, no darkness, still the cold night on warm skin.

I'm not dead.

There's a flash of disappointment in my eyes.

When I look up I can clearly see your face trough dark french alleys and really,_ really?_

You reach out to help me up and I think you're shaking but it might be me, your mouth is pressed in a thin line, silent, so deadly silent when you take me with you.

For a few minutes I'm almost passive, my mind retreating into its apathetic haze, but then you're grabbing me roughly, slam me against the wall, clothes on the floor in a tangled heat as you take what you need and I give it freely. I hiss your name as I come, an accusation and a prayer, and you just kiss me softly and pulls my trembling body close.

It's almost a good enough reason not to die.

**ii.**

We are reborn in the age of a revolution, fighting for freedom once again, side by side.

I am not ready to lose you again.

**iii.**

You save my life, not once or twice but again and again, we're trying to keep us breathing, living, weeks, months, years. I'm sitting on the roof of some old french bakery, the adrenaline of a fight all gone leaving me bone-weary and cold. You walk slowly, boots slopping in the wet, and I try to feel some sort of happiness or excitement but it all seems to wash away in the rain, so i stare back out into the rain.

Time has passed so fast and still, it feels as if we don't have enough time to share, to spare.

"I'm so tired," the words slip from my lips before I can dwell on them and I'm tired of so many things, tired of losing you again and again, tired of watching innocent people get screwed or killed, a revolution that claims his tribute. I realise that the adrenaline rush is no longer worth the devastating low left in its absence. It leaves a desolate void that I have no idea how to fill.

I can't watch you die again.

_(we know both how this will ends)_

You are close enough to touch me now, reach out to place a hand on my shoulder, my body, and suddenly I desperately want you to pull me away from the edge, pull me away, away because I don't think I can, not this time, not again.

_(in my head i'm already fallen, rushing to the earth, to the end)_

You take one last step and your arms are around me, clutching my wet, trembling body to yours like you're trying to hold me together.

Maybe you are.

Your mouth is desperate on mine, hands tearing at my clothes as you try to stitch me back together, lips trembling when you press out, "I need you," and you pull me down, rain coating us until it's skin on slick skin and I can no longer tell us apart.

As I start to move inside you, pressed up against your warmth, your voice steals quietly into my ears. It echoes around my brain, sends heated blood pulsing through my veins, and when I devour you it's a sort of worship.

"I love you," you declare quietly, a promise and a warning, a memory nevertheless.

"I love you."

**iv.**

We love, we fight, we hate, we live and it reminds me of so many things we shared in Masyaf. I have a cause to fight for, people who wants to be free and I can hear your voice, warning, "You are not Achilles himself reborn." I look at you, impossibly fond and with the knowledge of a truth you wouldn't understand, not yet because I can see that you can't remember, not this time, and I say, "That would make you my heel, for if you die, I will die also."

**v.**

Time slips trough my fingers, so fast I can't stop thinking about how many grains of sand still rest in our hourglass.

**vi.**

It ends even before the revolution starts.

**vii.**

Blood's hovering at the same time as my breath catches in my throat, I can taste metal on my lips and my footsteps are heavy, so heavy, and I feel like carrying a thousand corpses.

_(maybe i am?)_

I drop myself to the ground next to your body, feel a knot in the stomach while my eyes turn wider than ever only to watch the blood pouring down from your neck and your torso like a waterfall, hands full of blood, trying to shake you alive.

Just like year 1228.

My mouth is open but the air doesn't fill my lungs and I can't speak. I bring a hand to your face, carefully, brush my thumb over your cheeks again and again, don't say anything at all because words are lost in my throat while the tears gather like the purest water in my eyes.

"In another life", I promise, take a shaky breath as the rain falls with more strength.

**viii.**

I feel, this time, strapped down and unmoving, the fire raining down on my own body, and I weep, weep as I look back and crumble to salt and taste it on my tongue with ash and flame and blood and smoke and eternity.

_(I cannot forget)_

**ix.**

The revolution has success.

But you are already dead and it feels like this means nothing at all.

_(I should have died with you)_

**x.**

You're not scared of oblivion, never were. You crave it, yearn for the sweetest death and not the bitter endless cycle of painful reincarnation. I wish I would have the same courage as you, the bravery to accept that my soul will find some rest somehow.

You are too much of me.

I am too much of you.

**xi.**

Somehow, this time was the hardest of them all.

* * *

**4**

**o.**

I exist only for you.

I am born, I live, I die.

All for you.

I am beginning to forget the start, to give up on an ending.

You are the sun, I am half in shadow, waiting to be blinded.

Life is circular. This is not what the church teaches, but me and the Church disagree on a number of things.

I am born. I live, I love, I die.

And so the circle continues.

**i.**

The year is 1864, the sate is Washington D.C and the continent is America. I searched for you, years and miles no obstacle for my willing flesh to reach you and your beautiful mind. It almost takes me twenty years and when i finally find you, there's the chance of being to late.

_(again)_

**ii.**

Freedom is your worst enemy and even if you don't fight for it this time you take what you need to survive, not more nor less. You're a thief, a hustler and all i can do is throw my good manners and resolutions aside. Pioneers of a Bonny and Clyde era, too smart for the police, too fast, too cocky.

I don't know how long this will last, how long this could last _(experiences say, not that long)_, but for now I feel happy. I am not even regretting the fact that it will eventually end because I have you by my side, and it's more than I could have hoped for.

**iii.**

You don't remember.

**iv.**

Lincoln dies half a year later and I know our time runs out.

We lie in cold sheets, tangled, two bodies, one mind. I take you close, so close and watch you sleep, watch your chest heave and sink, watch you breath and live and free of sorrows. I know it will end soon and we'll have to part ways again. I fear that I can't gather the courage to search for you again.

I can't find sleep that night.

**v.**

Eventually, we have still 2 more months.

We stand side by side with hands behind our backs, cloth on our eyes and when I hear the loading of the guns, the riffles, it feels like_ Fate_. I wish I could see your face, wanton and full of defiance, proud as if in victory and right before the bullets take us to our deaths, all I can do is whisper your name.

_(it feels right)_

**vi.**

I honestly prayed that the bullets would finally be the end of my life, my time. God knows how many I had lived through, sad ones, void ones, ones so painful I could barely think of them without a shudder running down my spine.

I had lived too long, too arduous, seen too many things to believe we'd make it out alive somehow.

**vii.**

Sometimes a life isn't long enough.

* * *

**5**

**o.**

This time I don't want to find you.

I am still healing from the last time.

_(I really start to get sick of this)_

**i.**

Fate and time are sly mistresses and they seem to enjoy tormenting me again and again, forcing me to do what I'm chosen to: caressing your next life's face with the blood of your past life still besmirching my hands.

I must drag that horrible pain into my next life and use it as encouragement to find your reincarnation even faster, to spend as much time with you as humanly possible, but the pain and the shame and the guilt of what I've done in our pasts always weights on my shoulders and drags my steps down, slower, further away from you.

**ii.**

It's Martin Luther King's time, another civilisation that wants freedom, searches for it, fights for it. I don't even know why I'm bothering again but I march with them, fight with them, try to give them the rights and freedom they crave for. I realise by this point that this is no ordinary feeling, fate and time will always lead my way to you.

**iii.**

Fate can be as kind as it can be cruel and i decide not to struggle, never.

**iv.**

I stopped justifying my choices and thoughts long ago and I felt like I was being pulled, like I knew where you were going to be and when. It wasn't like the aimless wandering of the beginning.

**v.**

When I finally find you among hundreds of protester it's your eyes that draw me in.

**vi.**

"We were gods once," I say in a whisper meant for shadows of the night, meant for you only. My eyes are blown so wide, the vivid gold has faded to asphalt black while we're counting stars under an icy dark night sky. My hands are shaking and breath escapes my lips in trembling puffs of smoke and fog in the cold air, goosebumps on our naked skins while grass is jabbing in our backs.

"We were?," you ask, because you can't disagree, perhaps you remember too, perhaps not as much as me,_ perhaps, perhaps._

I close my eyes and remember the scent of metal and blood and sand, of horses and straw and old walls; I remember dark robes, crystal-clear smiles and eyes clouded with jealousy or wonder, always trying and vying for my favour.

We were gods among men in many ways.

_(I remember home)_

When I look at you, hopefully, i can't see any recognition in your dark orbs, no sign of understanding.

I trace the markings on your left arm, birthmarks and scars from a life long forgotten, long past, but they still look like ancient glyphs and signs carved into your skin, remember me of golden traces on a golden sphere. Flesh memories, of lives we once lived.

I promise, "We'll be gods again. In the next life."

**vii.**

I want to erase the pasts we haven't lived together, because these pasts don't matter when the future awaits us.

**viii.**

I feel the bullet _(again, really?)_, flinch back, recoil from the impact on my chest, the pain from tearing veins and broken ribs, my grip on your fingers so tight that I can feel your bones snap into fragments.

I have one last look at your face but all I see is the red spilling from your chest.

**ix.**

In the darkness that follows your face is unscathed, whole, perfect.

_(it scares me)_

**x.**

Somehow this time feels like the last time.

* * *

**+1**

**o.**

This is in Masyaf. Again.

**i.**

I don't know what got into me to return here of all things, maybe nostalgia, maybe I'm a masochist.

Maybe I knew where to find you all along.

**ii.**

I'm visiting the castle of Masyaf, the ruins that remain chiseled in the sand, my feet taking me as far as they can, ghosts of the past rushing by, voices long forgotten echo trough hollow walls. There are people around, tourists making pictures, giggling and gibbering, eating fast food from a salesman at the entering and my head is screaming _get away, all of you, these walls are mine, these memories are holy, stop staining the memento with your ignorance._

Nobody can hear me.

_(nobody understands)_

My feet never stop, they're taking me up to your room, dust on dilapidated stones, an empty room, no sign of long forgotten memories anymore. I rest, I stare and I wish I could forget but the memories of your head in my hands won't go away.

When I turn around to leave I can see your face, your eyes, judging me again. It's you and it's not, modern times give you a youthful look, still wise, still arrogant but I can't breathe cause I fear it's a dream.

_(was it really that easy this time?) _

I can't think of anything to say so I'm relieved when you decide to go ahead, _(you were always so far ahead of me, I realise but wouldn't say out loud)_ asking, "You remember?"

And there's only so much I can say to this, there's so much already said, so much already done but I don't want it to end, can't let that happen so I say, breathing, with a smile nevertheless, "I remember."

**iii.**

All I can actually focus on in the minutes following are clear, brown eyes.

**iv.**

One of the most important questions you will ask me later will be, "Since when?"

My voice will be filled with anguish while I scramble to try and find an explanation, any explanation that'll be sufficient cause there's a flippant, if somehow true answer like "Since 1191", but we don't talk about this, not anymore. "Since you lost your arm" or "Since we died" are both dismissed and pushed away, nothing barely scratching the truth, "Since I failed you" is too obvious and also false, because it started long before when you first asked me to be your disciple, countless arguments stirring under our skins, an itch we couldn't, wouldn't, scratch.

It's not that I won't have an answer, I have a few but all of them will be insufficient and only partly true, after all the "Since when?" has never been a question.

But I have to start somewhere.

So I answer, "Since Masyaf."

**v.**

I have known you for nearly two millennia.

To most people, that sounds like forever, to me and you, it has been a split second.

Not every meeting is perfect, I remember horrors from dark memories, nights I woke screaming from dreams in languages I didn't know my tongue could speak but you are here, holding me down, holding me close. You whisper affections like prayers against my skin, sweet and soothing and all-knowing.

It takes me a while to understand that thousands of years of existence is hardly enough time to get to know you. Both of us have died countless times, the cold hand of death helping us to understand who we are, who we always have been.

I don't believe in gods anymore, neither dogmas, nor religions.

I believe in you and me when we hold our breaths in that timeless moment of clarity when our souls recognise each other.

We are what we are.

Altair and Malik.

Always.

**vi.**

Sometimes one life is all that we need.


End file.
